The Deluge and the Rainbow

I confess I have small patience with Mr. Granville Penn's book against / Professor Buckland. Science will be superseded, if every phenomenon is to / be referred in this manner to an actual miracle. I think it absurd to / attribute so much to the Deluge. An inundation, which left an olive-tree / standing, and bore up the ark peacefully on its bosom, could scarcely have / been the sole cause of the rents and dislocations observable on the face of / the earth. How could the tropical animals, which have been discovered in / England and in Russia in a perfectly natural state, have been transported / thither by such a flood? Those animals must evidently have been natives of / the countries in which they have been found. The climates must have been / altered. Assume a sudden evaporation upon the retiring of the Deluge to / have caused an intense cold, the solar heat might not be sufficient / afterwards to overcome it. I do not think that the polar cold is adequately / explained by mere comparative distance from the sun.

You will observe, that there is no mention of rain previously to the / Deluge. Hence it may be inferred, that the rainbow was exhibited for the / first time after God's covenant with Noah. However, I only suggest this.